A group of teenagers surround a newly arrived immigrant and ask what her name is. The student looks bewildered, and then answers. The other students make fun of her name, mock her accent, and then walk away in peals of laughter. The immigrant student is left alone, on the verge of tears.
Fortunately, the incident is only a skit, but it bears a close resemblance to the treatment students who seemed "different" at Fulton Middle School in Fountain Valley have encountered many times.
Carissa Quan serves as advisor for the Teaching Tolerance Today Club. Members include Leah Ankers (left) and Zeina El-Kassen.
The skit took place at the Teaching Tolerance Today Club, which has 30 members and meets every Friday after school. Carissa Quan, a social studies teacher who serves as the club's advisor, explains to the audience that the skit shows intolerance and asks, "What could have been done to prevent this?"
Club members in the audience raise their hands and offer some ideas on ways that other students could put a stop to the cruelty. The members all wear white shirts as a symbol of peace.
"Nearby students could tell the other kids that she doesn't speak English, and what they are doing is mean," says one student. "And they could tell the mean students that she can say things in her native language that they can't pronounce or understand."
"Other students could have asked them to stop and made them feel bad for what they were doing," offers another student.
"Okay, let's do the skit again, and this time we'll incorporate ways to show tolerance," says Quan, a member of the Fountain Valley Education Association.
In the second act, when the teasing begins, another student walks up to the group and says, "Why are you doing that to her? How would you feel if you didn't know the language, and other people made fun of you?" Stunned, the tormentors leave.
Quan asks students to describe the emotions that the skit invokes in them. Several of the students say it hits pretty close to home.
"That situation actually happened to me in elementary school," says Tiffanie Cheng. "No one came to defend me. Girls laughed at me and walked off. It hurt when they made fun of me. I can still picture their faces."
"When I came here from Korea, I didn't know anything but the alphabet," says Lydia Noh. "I felt so sad that I cried. No one understood me. I couldn't understand why I had to go through this. Now that I know English, I'm so happy to be here. But it was so hard to get used to things."
Next, Quan asks Jillian Theil to share some tips with fellow members on ways to stop students from being cruel.
The eighth-grader sounds savvy and experienced in the matter. "It helps if you ask students to stop what they are doing in a way that's forceful and assertive, but not rude," she says. "If you are rude to them, they will only get defensive. Ask them how they would feel if they were in the shoes of the person who is being made fun of.
Tiffanie Cheng facilitates a role-playing exercise with Rebecca Littlefield, Kim Ludas, Courtney O'Connor and Jim Collen at Fulton Middle School.
"Very often, when you ask people to stop, they are shocked. They don't expect other people to stand up to them. They think they are in charge of the situation. But if others don't say anything, they'll keep doing it. We have to give them a wake-up call and let them know that what they are doing is wrong."
She adds, "If you are not comfortable speaking out, get someone like me - who will stand up to them. And it helps to prevent intolerance in others by serving as a good example yourself. We should stop saying things like, 'That's so retarded.' Eliminate words like that from your vocabulary."
"It helps if you practice speaking out against intolerance," Quan tells the students. "Practicing will give you confidence, so you can speak up when it really happens."
Sydne Sullivan, club president, reminds members that students who are abused often become the abusers. "There are a lot of people who were teased in sixth grade, who are now in eighth grade and tease others," she says. "That's the kind of thing we have to put a stop to."
"I think a lot of people have become more aware of the need for tolerance after the tragedy of September 11," adds Sullivan.
The terrorism in New York and Washington, D.C, had a huge impact on students, says Quan, and has given the effort to teach tolerance a new urgency. Students in the Teaching Tolerance Today Club raised money to help victims and family members of the World Trade Center tragedy, collaborated with the Fountain Valley High School Red Cross Club and also made a "peace quilt" decorated with doves.
The club did not begin as a reaction to the events of Sept. 11. It was founded last year after Quan's seventh-grade class participated in a contest sponsored by Chapman University, in which they had to write essays about the Holocaust and how to prevent it from happening again. Some of the students met with Holocaust survivors for their research.
"My students began talking and thinking about things like civil rights, Japanese internment and what tolerance really means," says Quan. "I suggested forming a club and asked if they would participate. They said yes and made it happen."
At the first meeting, Quan asked the students why they felt it was important for them to participate.
"A lot of them have been victims of intolerance themselves," says Quan. "They understood what it was like, and wanted to make things better."
She adds that the club has discussed Columbine in detail, "because the student perpetrators were bullied and isolated. They didn't feel part of a group. Inclusion is so important for everybody."
Members believe that they are making a difference on campus. Even though their numbers are small, they feel that what they are doing has an impact.
"There's a kid I feel sorry for," says seventh-grader Matthew Sguerri. "He has a skin disease and is allergic to a lot of things. The kids pick on him. I got there in time once and made them stop. I want him to have a good life. I want him to like school."
"We might not be making a big difference now, but when everyone realizes what we're about, people will become more tolerant," says Courtney O'Connor. "I think that, eventually, tolerance will spread."
